Lennox Randon

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We are very pleased to share our first guest storyteller; Lennox Randon!
Lennox (pronounced “Li´  nok,” with a short i sound, but just call him Randon) is a former police office, teacher, technical writer and is now a full time father and published author….and he is currently battling GIST. After exchanging emails with Randon and reading his blog, I bought and read his book Friends Dogs Lover Bullets. It’s a fun book to read and Randon is a wonderful writer and I highly recommend it! When you finish reading his story, check out his website and read more about his life, and listen to the music he composes, it's quite good ;-) This is Randon's story.

Author With Terminal Cancer Forms Writing Group And Publishes First Novel

In 1990, I started my first novel. Never finished it.
In 1992, I started my second novel. Never finished it.
Then, life got in the way.   Marriage, work, travel, child.  Cancer.
In September of 2008, a gastroenterologist performed an upper endoscopy on me
and found a GIST. In October, surgery was performed and the tumor was removed. By the end of January 2010, I was able to stop chemo after 13 months and my life returned to normal.

I decided that since I had beaten cancer, it was time to get serious about writing again. By October of 2010, I’d recruited an acquaintance who I knew had also started a novel. We began to meet on Sunday evenings to pursue our dream.Our goal was four new pages per week and things were going well.  Neither of us wanted to show up without pages, so we kept each other moving forward.  I now knew it would be possible to finish my novel.

Unfortunately, only two months later, on December 16, 2010, an ambulance transported me to the hospital where a CT scan showed innumerable tumors. My cancer had metastasized. Surgery was scheduled, but we were told I would not survive.I was moved to ICU, and my wife and I said our final goodbyes. Once we thought about the whole surgery deal, though, we realized it would be best to consult with oncologists before rushing to cut me open again.  The oncologists said that we should put off surgery and try bombarding the tumors with chemo first. I took two weeks off from writing but then went back to weekly writing meetings, albeit under the influence of fairly heavy pain medications.  My goal had changed slightly though.  Now I just wanted to finish a novel and self publish it so that I could hold it in my hands before I died. 

 My novel,  Friends Dogs Bullets Lovers, is about two lifelong friends who enter Witness Protection and start doing off-the-radar private investigations.   While there is a fair amount of action and humor, much of the book is about friendship and romance.  The characters talk about books, music, religion (Christianity and agnosticism) and more.  My shortened life expectancy freed me to say some things that I might have avoided for fear of offending. When I’m writing, I focus on making the story and characters as real as possible by putting myself in the situations and having the characters respond as I would for the most part. Parts of the novel come from my life experiences.  Like the narrator, I have worked as a police officer and a technical writer.

We recruited a third member to our writing group and two years later, all three of us have produced novels (two of which are self-published). We’ve done a reading at a local bookstore, appeared on a local morning TV show and radio segment, and were interviewed and featured in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa newspaper, The Gazette.  The newspaper also reviewed 2 of our books. I am currently working on a historical fiction novel that takes place in 1858-1859 and has appearances by Harriet Tubman and John Brown.  I am also considering writing a nonfiction book telling the story of how our writing group started and how we make our group work.  I’ve written a children’s book about poverty in childhood but don’t have an illustrator yet.

My web site, LennoxRandon.com, details more about my life.
My novel is available at CreateSpace.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes.

Diane Moser

First, let me say that I am so pleased to be collaborating with Lon Garber on this new blog! I emailed Lon after reading about his new book and asked him if he would like to collaborate with me on a blog that would share the positive stories of all of us who have encountered GIST. We have so much to deal with, I wanted a place for people to share their stories of overcoming whatever GIST hands us, and to honor those who are no longer with us. Thankfully, Lon said yes and quite frankly has done most of the work on this blog so far! I hope that all of you will share your stories so that we may be inspired!
Now, to my story....

I have made my living as a pianist, composer, educator all of my life. I’ve also been producing concerts on a regular basis in the Montclair, NJ area since the mid 90’s. I am a single mom, and my son is now 34 years old. The life of a musician is not an easy one. Most of our work is free-lance, some happens regularly, then there are the hours of practicing, rehearsing, teaching, networking, it’s a juggling act and a bit of a roller coaster ride.
Being a musician is as much of a vocation as it is an avocation , it is my life. When GIST appeared in my life, in Feb of 2009, I thought everything would come crashing down...and it did..but only for a short while. Most of everything that happened can be read on a blog that was started for me at the time by my dear friend Elzy Kolb....http://d-mo-zone.blogspot.com/ 

 Surprisingly, when I look back over the past 4 years, I see that my life did not come crashing down for long, but instead expanded to encompass many new and wonderful experiences. Performances, composing, film, artist colonies, traveling, new projects, and a new job, my world had expanded in ways I had never dreamed. There were 5 projects I had in various stages before GIST. The good news is that 2 of those projects are now completely finished. The first, a recording I did with virtuoso bassist and my dear friend of 35 years, Mark Dresser. We recorded this project with CIMP Records, on my birthday in July 2008, and it was released March 2012. The recording is called "Duetto", and there are compositions by Mark and myself.

To hear samples of this recording you can go to my website...
http://dianemosermusic.com/music/duetto/

Mark and I had never recorded before, but have played together for over 3 decades. This was an extra special occasion, and I am so pleased with this recording.

As soon as I found out that "Duetto" was being released, I went back to work on another recording that I had worked on from 2002-2007. I had been traveling to San Diego during that time and recording with friends that I had known from my home state of Iowa since the mid 70's and more friends from San Diego. I was going to release it sooner, but GIST put a hold on that for a time.

This recording runs the gamut of Jazz (standards and contemporary), Latin, and even an electronic remix by my son Chad! I dedicated this recording to everyone who helped me through my GIST crisis. It's called "Diane Moser WDMO" and was named by Jazz journalist Elzy Kolb. When she heard the mix she told me that it sounded like a really cool radio station...and since most of my big band members refer to me as D-Mo, we decided the call letters of this radio station had to be WDMO. You can go to my website to hear samples of this as well...http://dianemosermusic.com/music/wdmo/

This next project goes back at least 38 years when I read James Thurber's book "The Last Flower", and decided that someday I would write music based on that book. In 2003 I was awarded a composition grant from Chamber Music America to compose for my quintet. I composed a 50 minute suite called.."Music for the Last Flower". We premiered the piece in NJ and NYC and have an outstanding live recording..but I always wanted a studio recording. In Nov of 2011 I was awarded a CAP recording grant from the American Music Center (now known as NewMusic USA) that would support that recording. We recorded the music in Sept of 2012, and I am now in the finishing stages. It will be released Fall 2013.

The other two projects I was working on before GIST were "Music of the Spheres", a four movement suite for my big band, and "The Birdsong Project" a group of compositions based on my improvisations and recordings with birds. You can read more about the development of these two projects on my website
http://dianemosermusic.com/2013/03/27/new-music-usa-metlife-creative-connection-program-award-and-beyond/. 

I am happy to report that I finished both projects and they were both performed while I was in residence at the Meadowlands Environmental Center in Lyndhurst, NJ during April/May of this year. It was a thrilling experience, and I had dreamed of doing this for probably 10 years! I don't have music samples of the performances ready for public consumption just yet, but you can go to their website and check out what we were doing, and, go to their Soundcloud page and listen to some of the music that was created in the workshops. http://moodle.rst2.edu/meadowlands/?page_id=1913 I plan on recording the birdsongs later this summer, and hopefully the big band music later this year.

The biggest thing I have learned is that life keeps changing, and, it’s a challenge to keep up with those changes. But so many times, when I thought it was all over, I learned that it was just beginning, and that’s pretty much how I live my life now. I also like to follow the advice of the Dalai Lama who has said that everyone should go somewhere each year that they’ve never visited before. I’ve taken that to another level, not just places, but ideas, new sets of skills and meeting new people. I also know how important it is to be grateful for everything that I have, in every sense of the word, and everyday I give thanks to all of those who helped me in my seriously darkest hours. Everyday is a gift, and I am forever thankful for that gift.

My son Chad!

An African Tale

"I can write."  It wasn't a sudden epiphany, but rather an emerging realization. I had the ability to put words on paper in such a way that people understood and enjoyed them.  It didn't take long for a dream to emerge: "I want to write a book someday." I had no idea what the book would be about. It didn't matter. I had talent and I wanted to display it. Dreams don't have to be specific. I wished upon that star and it kept me warm at night.

Then came college, marriage and the baby carriage. The star still twinkled in the dark regions of my mind, but practical realities, parenting, and career screamed for attention. Over the years, many who read my musings in newsletters would comment, “You should write a book” and when they said that, the star would wink at me. Maybe later once I’d learned something about life and gathered enough stories.

In 2002, I moved to Africa. Life became scarily exciting, and the stories mounted. People kept saying, “I hope you’re writing this down. It would make a great book.” I was. Writers write, it’s what we do. We record life in journals just in case . . .

Eventually, I started the process of converting my journals into a book. I wrote the prologue and first chapter and stopped. Several months later I wrote the second and third chapters and stopped again. Years later my book was still mostly a dream.

In 2009, GIST entered my life. While awaiting surgery, I jumped into writing with a vengeance.  Completing my book some day was no longer an option. Writer’s block was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I had to Get-R-Done. I didn’t know how many days I had left. I finally had a deadline. I had to finish the book before GIST finished me. In a strange way, GIST became a blessing. It reminded me how tenuous life really is. It motivated me to write with urgency. It gave me a larger story to tell. My African tale expanded into a medical adventure.

I used the cards God gave me to build discipline into my passion. I buried myself in my book. It was therapeutic.  My cares and worries disappeared inside my pursuit of a dream. By the time surgery rolled around, I had finished the writing.  I edited the manuscript while recovering from two surgeries.

Four years after surgery, I’m still cancer free. My book was published earlier this year.  It’s called The Leap: Living the Life you Dream About and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m no longer a writer with a pipe dream, I’m living the life of a published author. 

Click here to read more about the book

Now about that second book . . .

GIST Watch Us Fly!

Dialogue is dangerous.  It spawns ideas. Ideas lead to exuberance and exuberance goes looking for action.   Before you know it, you're committed. This blog was born from just such a conversation.

Diane and I have GIST (Gastro-intestinal Stromal Tumor), a life-threatening disease that can suck the life outta' you if you let it. We've decided GIST doesn't deserve that power. It may kill us some day, but until that day comes, we've decided to FLY! We have GIST, but it doesn't have us.  Diane's a musician.  I'm a writer.  That's who we are and GIST can't steal that from us. In many ways, our disease is a catalyst to write and compose today rather than some day. We want to tell the world our stories, but we are just two of thousands of GIST overcomers. Each one has a story to tell, not about disease and death, but about a passion to live life to the fullest.

GIST Watch Us Fly! is a blog dedicated to all GIST families (patients, caregivers and all who love them) who refuse to let their disease steal their life, their dreams, their ambition and their calling.  It's a celebration site where we share our stories of kicking cancer in the teeth. Think of it as a campfire or a community center or wherever good stories are told to uplift and encourage others.

We want to hear how you are overcoming GIST.  Click on the Submit your Story button above we'll help you share your story with the world.